With the rapid development of Internet and the popularization of large-screen multifunctional mobile terminals, there comes many mobile data multimedia services and various high-bandwidth multimedia services, such as video conference, television broadcast, video on demand, advertisement, online education and interactive game, is which meet the multi-service requirement of mobile subscribers and bring a new point of service growth for the mobile operators. These mobile data multimedia services require that multiple subscribers can receive the same data simultaneously, with the characteristics of large data size, long duration, sensitive time delay and the like, compared with the normal data services.
To effectively utilize the resources of mobile networks, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) puts forward the MBMS which is a technique to transmit data from a data source to multiple destination mobile terminals, thereby realizing the resource sharing of networks, comprising core network and access network, and improving the utility ratio of network resources, especially air interface resources. The MBMS defined by the 3GPP not only can realize the plain-text and low-speed message multicast and broadcast, but also can realize the broadcast and multicast of high-speed multimedia services, to provide plentiful video, audio and multimedia services. This definitely accommodates the future development trend of mobile data and provides a better service prospect for the development of 3rd Generation (3G).
The characteristics of the MBMS are large data size of service, long duration of reception of mobile terminals and constant average data rate, which determine that the MBMS system is semi-static of scheduling services and configuring control signalling, i.e., the MBMS service is constant in the scheduling information and control signalling information for a long term, so that each periodic system in the MCCH sends an constant information; and the sending is constant because it is possible that new subscribers will access the MBMS system any time. Therefore, it is unnecessary for a mobile terminal which has received the MCCH to receive a constant MCCH each time, and the constant reception of MCCH will waste power because the reception and parsing processes are comparatively power-consumed, owing to the large amount of information of MCCH. In light of this, it is proposed to increase MCCH update indication information in the MBMS system to describe whether the MCCH is changed or not by using a small amount of information, and the access mobile terminals which has received the MCCH service only need to receive the MCCH update indication information with a small amount of information and determine whether to receive the MCCH or not.
In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, the sending of MCCH update indication information is not yet completely discussed. But it is not desired to introduce a dedicated physical channel for the sending of the MCCH and the sending of the MCCH update indication information in the LTE, whereas the functions of the MCCH update indication information should be reserved. There is no fixed physical channel, so it is required to configure physical resources for the MCCH update indication information, and still to send the scheduling information of the MCCH update indication information to mobile terminals for receiving the MCCH update indication information. Because the way of sending the MCCH update indication information is still in discussion, the way of sending the scheduling information of the MCCH update indication information is undetermined.